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Teens' Blogging Shows Little Risky Behavior

Jim Liebelt

Jim Liebelt's Blog

2010Mar 25

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A new Ohio State University study of 100 teen bloggers from around the
US found that a majority used blogs to develop relationships with their
peers and build a sense of community, rather than to admit misbehavior.

The
research has appeared in the current issue of the Child and
Adolescent Social Work Journal.

According to Dawn
Anderson-Butcher, associate professor of social work at Ohio State, the
findings suggests that blogging could be used therapeutically to help
troubled teens express themselves in positive ways.

Anderson-Butcher
and her students analyzed blog posts from the public Web site Xanga
(http://www.xanga.com/) for a month, to find out whether teens blogged
about risky behaviors, such as skipping school, doing drugs, or having
sex.

The researchers found most teens in the study blogged about
positive behaviors, such as studying, participating in school
activities, spending time with family, and going to church.
Anderson-Butcher said: "We looked at every quote, and the kids wrote
about very few problem behaviors.

"They showed a lot of creative
expression through poetry, lyrics and song. It was very exciting-and for
me, positive-to see the typical developmental activities that they were
writing about in their blogs."

While the researchers couldn't
know whether parents were supervising the Xanga blogs used in this
study, the teens were clearly writing blog entries as messages to their
peers.

Among the most common positive activities the teens
described were playing video games (65 percent); watching television (45
percent); doing homework (40 percent); going to lessons, such as music,
dance, or martial arts (38 percent); browsing the Internet (29
percent); and participating in faith-based activities (22 percent).

Anderson-Butcher
said even the teens' most common complaint - boredom (65 percent) - was
not such a bad thing if they were blogging about it instead of engaging
in risky behaviors.